"It meant that I couldn't see who it was who stood there. Just as I can hardly now see more than that you are unhappy. What is the matter, my dear and beautiful friend?" His voice was solicitous. Madame von Marwitz dropped again into her chair and leaning forward, her hands hanging clasped between her knees, she again wept. "The matter is the old one," she sobbed. "Ingratitude! Ingratitude on every hand! My crime now has been that I have sought--at the sacrifice of my own pride--to bring a reconciliation between that stubborn child and her husband, and for my reward she overwhelms me with abuse!" "Tell me about it," said Mr. Drew, seating himself beside her and, unreproved, taking her hand. CHAPTER XXXV Karen did not go to her room. She was afraid that Mrs. Talcott would come to her there. She asked the cook for a few sandwiches and going to one of the lower terraces she found a seat there and sat down. She felt ill. Her mind was sore and vague. She sat leaning her head on her hand, as she had sat in the morning-room, her eyes closed, and did not try to think. She had escaped something--mercifully. Yes, the supreme humiliation that Tante had prepared for her was frustrated. And she had been strangely hard and harsh to Tante and in return Tante had been piteous yet unmoving. Her heart was dulled towards Tante. She felt that she saw her from a great distance. The moon had risen and was shining brightly when she at last got up and climbed the winding paths up to the house. A definite thought, after the hours that she had sat there, had at last risen through the dull waters of her mind. Why should Tante go away? Why should not she herself go? There need be no affront to Tante, no alienation. But, for a time, at least, would it not be well to prove to Tante that she could be something more than a problem and a burden? Could she not go to the Lippheims in Germany and teach English and French and Italian there--she knew them all--and make a little money, and, when Tante wanted her again to come to Les Solitudes, come as an independent person? It was a curious thought. It contradicted the assumptions upon which her life was founded; for was she not Tante's child and Tante's home her home? So curious it was that she contemplated it like an intricate weapon laid in her hand, its oddity concealing its significance. She turned the weapon over. She might be Tante's child and Tante's home might be hers; yet a child could gain its own bread, could it not? What was there to pierce and shatter in the thought that it would be well for her to gain her bread? "Tante has worked for me too long," she said to herself. She was not pierced or shattered. Something very strange was in her hand, but she was only reasonable.